Sunday Telegraph 50: From the archive February 12, 1961

In a new series, Paul Clements presents snapshots of five tumultuous decades
from the pages of 'The Sunday Telegraph'. This week: JB Priestley
goes to America, Britain watches a total eclipse on television, and a
provocative artist is quietly asked to leave a Mayfair club

From its earliest days, The Sunday Telegraph has been a vocal supporter of the arts. Nowhere was this more visible than in its second edition, in which J B Priestley wrote a long essay about JFK’s America, a high-minded review by Rebecca West – of a scholarly work about love in literature by John Bayley – led the books page, and Yehudi Menuhin contributed an elegaic piece about his violin teacher, Romanian composer Georges Enesco. It was trumpeted as the first in a series entitled “Music’s Great Teachers as Seen by Their Pupils”, which was destined for a short lifespan.

Priestley’s dispatch – billed as one in which the playwright “takes an old friend’s look at Kennedy’s America”, a country he claims repeatedly to have loved – begins with a withering opening line. “I never arrive from London at Idlewild – and I seem to do this at least once a year nowadays – without feeling threatened by one of those nightmare worlds of science fiction. If not this time then next there will be a robot Customs officer or taxi driver. A machine will glare at my passport.”

Upon landing, he does not much care for what he sees. He laments an “over-packaged society which of course we on our side are busy copying”, and points to an emerging dystopia in which “young men… refuse any responsibility, even the minor tasks of dressing, shaving and washing adequately”. His dark conclusion is either prurient or prescient: “Sometimes I begin to wonder if we are building Hell on this earth.”

This paper’s correspondents were equally despondent about what they saw on television at the time. Judging from a notable lack of column inches, the only thing worth watching on the box in February 1962 was the total eclipse, Britain’s first since June 29, 1927. Millions were able to watch what the paper called “the grandest sight in nature” live on television for the first time – a living-room spectacular that was expected to receive “the highest viewing rating ever”.

It fell to the arts to throw light onto news pages that were otherwise saturated with internicine politics. “Art Sellers Did Not Amuse Churchills Club” headlined an acid item about an incident involving Lionel Burleigh, the London artist and provocateur who famously squatted in a disused Leicester Square shop with his wife and nine children. On this occasion, Burleigh was apprehended by staff at the Mayfair club when his entourage arrived unannounced with armfuls of canvases and attempted to auction them to carousers.

According to the report: “Half a dozen men and women walked solemnly into the soft-lights-and-music atmosphere of Churchills Club in the West End last night, carrying an assortment of paintings. ‘Where do we hang these?’ they asked.”

Burleigh, who gained notoriety by affixing his own artworks to the walls of the Tate Gallery, like a precursor to Banksy, had hoped to raise funds for flights to Spain, where he had been offered the run of an 18 room holiday villa. The club’s official response was that there had been a misunderstanding. However, the exact words uttered by “horrified management” to Burleigh were reported by the paper: “Oh no, please go away.”

40 years ago

“The Prince of Wales returned to Nairobi yesterday after a safari trip during which he woke up to find himself looking at a full-grown rhinoceros. The sound of the party’s camels panicking made the Prince stir in his sleeping bag. He looked up to discover the rhino only 30 yards away. He kept still in his bag. Then the rhino snorted and ambled peacefully out of the camp.”

February 14, 1971

30 years ago

“Mr Heseltine, environment secretary, is facing pressure to take action against Labour-controlled local authorities accused of delaying tactics to avoid selling council houses. The councils say they are acting strictly within the law, although some admit they have no intention of giving the work high priority.”

February 15, 1981

20 years ago

“John Major set out in detail his vision for Britain yesterday for the first time since he became Prime Minister. In a speech to the Young Conservatives’ conference, he called for an unending search for improved public services and said there would be no hiding place for the ‘shoddy or second-rate’.”

February 10,1991

10 years ago

“I have found my limit. It was really windy, really violent. It is the closest to death I have ever been. I am very exhausted”

Ellen MacArthur, interviewed from a helicopter by a Sunday Telegraph reporter during her final strait of the Vendee Globe race, 10 years ago this week. At the finish line, she became the fastest woman to sail around the globe.